All James Button wanted to do was to lay in his bunk, pull the quilt over his face, and escape this town, but the revelers just outside his door wouldn’t allow him any peace. Instead he busied his hands with the task of crafting new rails for his stock of flavoring herbs, medicaments, wool-stuffs, and clockworks. Till now he’d gotten by with a bit of quarter-round tacked to the lip of each shelf and good roads, but he was eight days out from [somewhere fun sounding] with a mountain tangle of road called [something fun sounding] and needing to be there in just six. His cargo would surely suffer fromt he trip. If he couldn’t get out of this [town] he could at least get ready to get out of this [town].
I started this yesterday and don’t like it much.
The little hand pointed to the twelve; James Button watched as the big hand crawled from the two to the three. He wanted to be asleep in his bunk—quilt pulled over his head as a guard against the mountains’ chill—but it was Shill’s Day and the revelers still reveled. The carousers still caroused.
In any normal town, in Corriedall or Brillen in Sheviot or Wendée, even in the great double city of Rough-Strong, Shill’s Day meant elaborate but over obvious cons during the day and a dinner among friends that evening where that year’s Shill footed the bill if they dined out or hosted the meal if they dined in. The next day was a working one. Here in [some town here] James discovered Shill’s Day meant something more, but he never discovered why. He was eight days out from [somewhere fun sounding] with a mountain tangle of road called [something fun sounding] and needing to be there in just six.
Photo courtesy of Susie Blackmon.
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300 words on day 996